Wordy Wednesday: I wandered lonely as a cloud

One of the first poems I remember reading while working on my English degree, several years ago now, was this one by William Wordsworth. Because of this I never forgot it but it also stuck out in my mind as it was so beautiful and innocent.

William Wordsworth hailed from the Romantic period of English Literature. Later on, his work would be scoffed at as too conservative, too happy-happy to be taken seriously–just the kind of thought that may have helped inspire Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, the much less innocent work of the late Victorian Era as well as writers like Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorn.

I still love this poem though. Innocence isn’t always a bad thing… just unrealistic.

Hope everyone has a great Wordy Wednesday.

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I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Photo by Tetyana Kovyrina on Pexels.com

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